Volume 9 Number 3 Article 1 10-15-1982 The Road and the Ring: Solid Geometry in Tolkien's Middle-earth Mark M. Hennelly Jr. California State University, Sacramento Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Hennelly, Mark M. Jr. (1982) "The Road and the Ring: Solid Geometry in Tolkien's Middle-earth," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 9 : No. 3 , Article 1. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol9/iss3/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Considers the complex interplay of the Ring and the Road (“linear progress and circular stasis”), along with other related motifs of lines, circles, intersections and crossroads, spirals and spheres, hands and eyes in The Lord of the Rings. Additional Keywords Geometry in The Lord of the Rings; Ring (symbol) in The Lord of the Rings; Road (symbol) in The Lord of the Rings; Stewardship in The Lord of the Rings; Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings—Symbolism; Patrick Wynne This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol9/iss3/1 MYTHLORE 33; Autumn 1982 page 3 The Road and the Ring Solid Geometry in Tolkien's Middle-earth Mark. M. Hennelly, Jr. There on the pastoral downs without a track and Tolkien's reader out of thought and into "reverie" To guide me, or along the bare white roads or fantasy. Whether or not the subcreator of Middle- Lengthening in solitude their dreary line, earth patterned his figurative landscape after Stone­ While through those vestiges of ancient times henge or any other of the nine hundred stone circles I ranged, and by the solitude o'ercome, or "causewayed enclosures"2 that dot the British Isles I had a reverie and saw the past, is moot. But certainly the competing road and ring geometry which measures Middle-earth is as spell­ .... when twas my chance binding and profound a riddle match as the mystery of To have before me on the downy plain shapes at Stonehenge. Once more, these landmarks con­ Lines, circles, mounts, a mystery of shapes stantly challenge the reader to solve the riddle of their "imitative forms" and to discover what they . (imitative forms "covertly express." By which the Druids covertly expressed Their knowledge of the heavens, and images forth Much of this riddle cannot be systematically The constellations), I was gently charmed, explained or decoded. Indeed Tolkien famously main­ Albeit with an antiquarian's dream, tained that he "cordially dislike[d] allegory in all And saw the bearded teachers, with white wands its manifestations," though he curiously admitted to Uplifted, pointing to the starry sky. his tale's "varied applicability to the thought and --The Prelude. 1805 ed., experience of readers" (1,12).3 The imaginative ere- XII, 315-501 ator of the most popular fantasy work of this century,4 however, is also the incisive literary critic of The reader of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Beowulf. And the conflict between these two personae Rings (1954-1955) encounters an enchanting yet unwittingly reveals itself in double talk to his pub­ enigmatic landscape patterned much like that which lis h e r S ta n le y Unwin on th e s u b je c t of l i t e r a r y fascinated Wordsworth at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. meaning; "There is a 'moral', I suppose, in any tale Generally, those "vestiges of ancient times" recall worth telling. But that is not the same thing [as Tolkien's own "antiquarian's dream" of Middle-earth, allegory]. Even the struggle between darkness and and the Druidical "bearded teachers" resemble shamans light . is for me just a particular phase of his­ like Gandalf and Elrond. More to the present point, tory, one example of its pattern, perhaps, but not however, is the "mystery of shapes," the lines and The Pattern; and the actors are individuals--they each, circles or roads and rings which tease both Wordsworth of course, contain universals, or they would not live page 4 MYTHLORE 33: Autumn 1982 at all, but they never represent them as such."5 This berry, can realize itself only through interaction with equivocation only further inspires the search for tex­ its complement: "they seemed to weave a single dance, tual relevance in Tolkien, for solving the riddle of neither hindering the other, in and out of the room, the hidden relationships between the pattern and The and round about the table" (I,183). Once agains, Tol­ Pattern. Consequently, it is important to realize kien's reading of Beowulf is relevant to the allegro that after the diffusive but relatively simple motif and penseroso movements in his own prose poem: "It is of light and dark imagery in the work, the most re­ essentially a balance, an opposition of ends and begin­ curring but profoundly complicated pattern is the anal­ nings. In its simplest terms it is a contrasted de­ ogous dialectic between the Road and the Ring, or lin­ scription of two moments in a great life, rising and ear progress and circular stasis. Not only does this setting; an elaboration of the ancient and intensely pattern coordinate and unify various structural, fig­ moving contrast between youth and age, first achieve­ urative, and thematic levels of the text, but under­ ment and f in a l d eath " ("BMC," p .8 1 ). As W.H. Auden standing its intricate variations also provides a puts it in his description of the Quest pattern in reliable measure of The Lord of the Rings' poignant T o lk ie n , "Any image of t h i s ex p e rien c e must be d u a lis - and hard-earned artistic success. For the reader soon tic, a contest between two sides."13 Thus in the tril­ discovers that the author himself, Tolkien the geome­ ogy, the reader repeatedly witnesses "two powers that trician, is the true model for his Ents who scrupu­ are opposed one to another; and ever they strive. ." lously "pay attention to every detail" (II,246). In (I,456). Sometimes these "competing songs" (I,145) are fact, the recently published Unifinished Tales tells external, like the "friends" and "foes" Elrond counsels us geometrically what we might have already guessed Frodo about (I,360); sometimes, on the other hand, they symbolically of the descendents of "The People of the are "warring duties" (III,159), internal conflicts like Stars," that their "land of Numenor resembled in out­ Sam's finding his love for Rosie pulling against his line a five-pointed star, or pentangle" (UT,p.l65, see love for his master: "I am that torn in two." Frodo's numbered page facing p.l for Tolkien's illustration). response is crucial for understanding Tolkien's dialec­ tical imagination: "But you will be healed. You were Tolkien was an inveterate doodler. As his son meant to be solid and whole, and you will be" (III,379). Christopher recalls, "while doing newspaper crossword That is, although it often seems as if one side is puzzles," his father "used to draw patterns such as right and one wrong, neither is really that self-exclu­ those" arabesque and mandala figures, textiles, and sive. Each is a necessary complement to the other; and heraldic devices reproduced in his collected illustra­ someone falls to evil, like Sauron and Saruman, only if tions? And the twin pillars of Tolkien's fantastic he selfishly seeks to destroy the dialectic itself; imagination are his attention to realistic detail and "for," as Elrond advises, "nothing is evil in the his insistence on such dialectical, often geometric beginning" (I,351). In fact, the genesis of the dia­ patterns, like those created by the Road and Ring, lectic, Iluvatar's providential Symphony in The Silma- underlying this detail. Moreover, the reader's con­ rillion, naturally incorporates (not conquers) the fidence and delight in Tolkien's verisimilitude assures satanic "discord of Melkor": his acceptance of and belief in the dialectical reality of what Tolkien terms the Secondary World of Faerie. And it seemed at last that there were two Thus, Tolkien rejects Coleridge's Romantic formula musics progressing at one time before the seat calling for the willing suspension of disbelief because of Iluvatar, and they were utterly at variance. "the moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but magic, or rather art, has failed." If, on the other slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, hand, readers naturally accept the reality of the from which its beauty chiefly came. The other Secondary World "for itself, they would not heve to had now achieved a unity of its own; but it suspend disbelief: they would believe," since "crea­ was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; tive Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that and it had little harmony, but rather a clam­ things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; orous unison as of many trumpets braying upon on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it" a few notes.